National Affairs: STATE OF THE UNION

For more than four months, Dwight Eisenhower and his team labored over
the State of the Union message. The job began last September, when
the President sent out a call to heads of 20 major departments and
agencies of the Federal Government. From the mountain of data that
poured in, the White House staff distilled a 15,000-word rough draft.
Then, line by line, President Eisenhower knifed through it with his
sharp yellow pencil, suggesting, rewriting, calling for more new facts.
The process went on at the White House, then in the little office in
Georgia above the pro shop at the...